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:.tt  ,  L'X  i  /  a'  u  - - 

5^7  y 
F74i. 

Illinois  State  Laboratory 

OF 


Natural  History 


Ubbana,  Illinois,  U.  S.  A.  * 

STEPHEN  A.  FORBES,  Ph.  D.,  LL.D., 

Director 


THE  INSECT,  THE  FARMER,  THE  TEACHER,  THE  CITIZEN, 

AND  THE  STATE 


BY 

STEPHEN  A.  FORBES 

% 


1915 


toSX-n 


THE  INSECT,  THE  FARMER,  THE  TEACHER,  THE  CITIZEN, 

AND  THE  STATE* 

By  Stephen  A.  Forbes, 

Illinois  State  Entomologist 

When,  a  year  and  a  half  ago,  entomology  was  separated  from  zoology 
as  a  department  at  the  University  of  Illinois,  I  was  asked  by  one  of  the 
college  deans  if  I  did  not  think  that  it  was  too  limited  and  subordinate 
a  subject  for  departmental  independence.  I  replied  that  entomology  was 
really  the  larger  half  of  zoology — an  answer  which  was  taken  as  jocular 
and  received  with  some  amusement,  but  which  was  intended  seri¬ 
ously,  and  which  can  be  substantially  justified  from  several  points  of 
view. 

In  the  first  place,  it  has  been  estimated  by  a  conservative  naturalist 
of  world-wide  reputation  that  more  than  half  of  the  animal  matter  of 
the  land  surfaces  of  the  globe  is  locked  up  in  the  bodies  of  insects.  That 
is  to  say,  if  all  the  elephants  and  lions  and  buffaloes  and  horses  and 
cattle  and  hogs  and  birds  and  snakes  and  lizards  of  the  earth  were  put 
into  one  pan  of  a  gigantic  balance,  and  all  its  insects  into  the  other,  the 
insect  collection  would  be  found  to  outweigh  all  these  other  land  animals 
taken  together.  It  is  difficult,  of  course,  to  prove  that  this  is  so,  but  the 
very  fact  that  a  naturalist  of  established  reputation  should  deliberately 
put  forth  such  a  statement  in  an  important  work  shows  how  dominant  a 
position  insects  occupy  in  the  life  of  the  world.  Undoubtedly  the  num¬ 
ber  of  species  of  insects  in  the  world  greatly  surpasses  that  of  all  other 
terrestrial  animals ;  which  is  another  way  of  saying  that  the  number  of 
fixed  variations  of  structure,  form,  color,  and  the  like,  to  be  found  in  in¬ 
sects  is  greater  than  that  presented  by  all  other  land  animals.  By  reason 
of  this  extraordinary  power  of  variation,  and  hence  of  adaptation — of 
fitness  to  various  conditions  and  situations — insects  are  very  widely  dis¬ 
tributed,  and  are  found  in  a  greater  variety  of  places  and  surroundings 
than  any  other  class  of  land  animals  on  the  earth.  They  are  able  to 
maintain  themselves,  in  other  words,  in  a  greater  number  of  ways  and 

*  An  address  delivered  December  13,  1910,  to  a  joint  meeting  of  teachers  and 
farmers  at  Normal,  Ill. 


2 


to  avail  themselves  of  a  larger  variety  of  the  resources  of  the  earth  than 
any  other  animals.  They  are,  in  fact,  of  all  land  animals,  the  most  suc¬ 
cessful  class,  the  best  adapted  to  the  conditions  of  life  on  earth  of  any 
that  now  exists,  or  ever  has  existed. 

Among  their  most  extraordinary  attainments  is  a  tribal  organiza¬ 
tion  which  actually  surpasses  anything  known  among  primitive  men. 
Their  industrial  classes  are  not  such  by  choice  or  by  accident  merely, 
but  by  instinct,  and  by  original  and  exclusive  inclination  and  capacity. 
Their  soldiers  fight,  their  workers  work,  their  housekeepers  keep  house, 
and  their  fathers  and  mothers  fulfil  their  appropriate  functions  just  as 
‘ ‘ dogs  delight  to  bark  and  bite, ’ ’  because  “it  is  their  nature  to ’ ’ ;  and 
such  is  the  prevailing  spirit  of  self-sacrifice  for  the  general  good  of  a 
group  of  the  so-called  social  insects  that  it  is  scarcely  too  much  to  say 
that  any  bee  or  wasp  or  ant  might  well  become  a  candidate  for  a  Car¬ 
negie  medal  almost  any  day  of  its  life. 

Possessed  of  all  these  powers  and  capacities,  it  is  not  to  be  wondered 
at  that  we  find  among  them  dangerous  and  tireless  competitors  with  our¬ 
selves  for  the  use  and  control  of  the  earth.  The  struggle  between  man 
and  insects  began  long  before  the  dawn  of  civilization,  has  continued 
without  cessation  to  the  present  time,  and  will  continue,  no  doubt,  as 
long  as  the  human  race  endures.  It  is  due  to  the  fact  that  both  men  and 
certain  insect  species  constantly  want  the  same  things  at  the  same  time. 
Its  intensity  is  owing  to  the  vital  importance  to  both  of  the  things  they 
struggle  for,  and  its  long  continuance  is  due  to  the  fact  that  the  contest¬ 
ants  are  so  equally  matched.  We  commonly  think  of  ourselves  as  the  lords 
and  conquerors  of  nature,  but  insects  had  thoroughly  mastered  the  world 
and  taken  full  possession  of  it  long  before  man  began  the  attempt.  They 
had,  consequently,  all  the  advantage  of  a  possession  of  the  field  when  the 
contest  began,  and  they  have  disputed  every  step  of  our  invasion  of  their 
original  domain  so  persistently  and  so  successfully  that  we  can  even  yet 
scarcely  flatter  ourselves  that  we  have  gained  any  very  important  advan¬ 
tage  over  them.  Here  and  there  a  truce  has  been  declared,  a  treaty  made, 
and  even  a  partnership  established,  advantageous  to  both  parties  to  the 
contract — as  with  the  bees  and  silkworms,  for  example ;  but  wherever 
their  interests  and  ours  are  diametrically  opposed,  the  war  still  goes  on 
and  neither  side  can  claim  a  final  victory.  If  they  want  our  crops  they 
still  help  themselves  to  them.  If  they  wish  the  blood  of  our  domestic 


3 


animals,  they  pump  it  out  of  the  veins  of  our  cattle  and  our  horses  at 
their  leisure  and  under  our  very  eyes.  If  they  choose  to  take  up  their 
abode  with  us  we  can  not  wholly  keep  them  out  of  the  houses  we  live  in. 
We  can  not  even  protect  our  very  persons  from  their  annoying  and 
pestiferous  attacks,  and  since  the  world  began  we  have  never  yet  ex¬ 
terminated — we  probably  never  shall  exterminate — so  much  as  a  single 
insect  species.  They  have,  in  fact,  inflicted  upon  us  for  ages  the  most 
serious  evils  without  our  even  knowing  it.  It  is  the  cattle  tick  which 
keeps  alive  and  spreads  the  Texas  fever ;  it  is  the  mosquito  which  inocu¬ 
lates  our  blood  with  yellow  fever  and  malaria ;  it  is  the  house-fly  which 
carries  to  our  food  the  germs  of  typhoid  fever;  it  is  the  flea  of  the  rat 
and  of  other  rodents  which  just  now  threatens  all  America  with  that 
dread  disease,  the  bubonic  plague, — and  now  that  we  have  begun  to  dis¬ 
cover  facts  of  this  order,  many  other  instances  of  this  kind  will  no  doubt 
presently  be  brought  to  light. 

Not  only  is  it  true  that  we  have  not  really  won  the  fight  with  the 
world  of  insects,  but  we  may  go  farther  and  say  that  by  our  agricul¬ 
tural  methods,  by  the  extension  of  our  commerce,  and  by  other  means 
connected  with  the  development  of  our  civilization,  we  often  actually 
aid  them  most  effectively  in  their  competition  with  ourselves.  Our 
rapidly  growing,  world-wide  commerce  of  fruits  and  grains,  our  importa¬ 
tion  of  new  plants  from  the  remotest  regions  of  the  earth,  often  bring 
their  special  insect  enemies  with  them,  and  our  exports  of  our  own  best 
varieties,  in  turn,  have  the  practical  effect  of  establishing  a  general  inter¬ 
national  exchange  of  injurious  insects,  such  that  we  seem  certain  to  be¬ 
come  the  eventual  prey  of  every  insect  species  living  anywhere  on  earth 
that  can  do  us  any  harm. 

I  bring  these  facts  together  here  in  this  general  way  to  remind  you 
that  the  difficulties  we  labor  under  are  neither  temporary  nor  excep¬ 
tional,  and  to  show  you,  as  well  as  I  can,  that  our  struggle  with  insects 
is  a  serious  and  important  matter,  calling  for  the  fullest  knowledge  and 
the  most  thoroughgoing  experiment,  and  calling  also  for  that  kind  of 
patriotism  which  consists  in  spending  time  and  labor  and  money  for  the 
general  welfare.  We  might  as  well  expect  to  repel  an  armed  invasion 
of  our  country  by  leaving  every  householder,  unaided,  to  drive  the 
enemy  from  his  own  door  as  to  expect  to  quell  insect  attack  upon  our 


4 


persons  and  property  without  concerted  measures  of  defense  and  with¬ 
out  self-sacrificing  effort  for  the  common  good. 

It  is  worth  our  while,  I  am  sure,  to  pause  for  a  moment  over  the 
question,  What  is  there  in  or  about  an  insect — small,  weak,  simple, 
short-lived,  ignorant,  mechanical,  and  conservative  to  the  last  degree,  as 
it  is — which  can  give  it  any  standing  whatever  in  competition  with  a 
relatively  huge,  powerful,  complex,  intelligent,  progressive,  and  re¬ 
sourceful  being  like  man  ?  It  is,  indeed,  in  these  very  points  of  its  weak¬ 
ness  that  it  finds  its  greatest  strength.  Its  small  size  makes  it  incon¬ 
spicuous  to  our  notice,  and  enables  it  to  find  shelter  and  support  in  mul¬ 
titudes  where  a  single  human  being  would  perish  from  exposure  or 
starve  to  death.  Starting  abreast  of  us,  at  its  origin  in  a  single  minute 
germ  cell,  it  can  complete  its  simple  process  of  development,  grow  to 
adult  size,  and  begin  to  reproduce  its  kind  in  a  few  weeks  or  months,  in 
some  cases  in  a  few  days  only,  while  we  require  perhaps  twice  as  many 
years.  It  can  thus  fit  itself  much  more  rapidly  and  exactly  to  tempo¬ 
rarily  favorable  conditions,  and  can  retreat  with  much  less  loss  from  those 
unfavorable,  than  can  a  creature  whose  lumbering  size,  enormous  de¬ 
mands,  slow  growth  and  still  slower  reproduction  make  it  sluggish  in  re¬ 
sponse  and  clumsy  in  adaptation. 

Furthermore,  the  feeding  and  respiratory  capacity  of  a  small  animal 
is  greater  in  proportion  to  its  size  and  its  individual  necessities  than  is 
that  of  a  large  animal,  and  it  has  therefore  a  larger  surplus  of  energy, 
derived  from  its  food  and  oxygen,  to  dispose  of.  Its  need  of  food  and 
air  for  mere  existence  is  proportionate  to  its  bulk  or  mass,  but  its  power 
of  absorbing  these  is  proportionate  to  its  absorbent  surfaces.  As  an  ani¬ 
mal  grows,  its  bulk  increases,  and  with  this  its  need  of  nourishment,  as 
the  cube  of  its  diameters ;  while  its  absorbent  surfaces  increase,  and  with 
these  its  powers  of  respiration  and  digestion,  as  the  square  of  its  diame¬ 
ters  only.  The  square  of  a  number  being  less  than  its  cube,  the  larger 
of  two  animals  will,  other  things  being  equal,  have  a  smaller  proportion 
of  its  energies  to  dispose  of,  beyond  its  bare  needs  for  maintenance,  than 
will  the  smaller  one.  Divide  a  hundredweight  of  living  matter  into  ten 
thousand  living  animals  and  it  will  have  a  very  much  greater  surplus  of 
energy  and  activity  to  expend  in  impressing  itself  on  the  outer  world 
than  it  could  have  if  concentrated  in  a  single  animal  weighing  a  hundred 
pounds.  Grasshoppers,  for  example,  can  devour  and  absorb  many  times 


5 


as  much  food  to  the  hundred  pounds  of  flesh  as  can  a  man,  and  a  hun¬ 
dredweight  of  these  insects  have  consequently  many  times  as  much 
energy  to  expend,  outside  their  bodies,  as  does  a  hundred-pound  boy  or 
girl.  It  is  this  which  makes  it  possible  for  the  beetle  or  the  bug  to  mul¬ 
tiply  habitually  at  a  rate  which,  if  it  were  applied  to  man,  would  vir¬ 
tually  destroy  the  race  by  over-population,  perhaps  within  a  single  gen¬ 
eration.  It  is  this  great  surplus  of  available  energy  which  enables  an 
insect  to  exhibit  activities  and  to  perform  mechanical  feats  altogether 
out  of  proportion  to  its  size,  if  tried  by  the  human  standard.  All  these 
overflowing  energies,  I  need  not  say,  are  available,  and  utilized  by  in¬ 
sects  as  a  rule,  in  their  own  interest  or  in  the  interest  of  their  family  or 
tribe.  Although  contemptibly  weak  per  unit  of  number,  they  are  amaz¬ 
ingly  strong  per  unit  of  mass,  and  it  is  an  enormous  advantage  to  them, 
rather  than  a  disadvantage,  that  the  mass  unit  should  be  subdivided  into 
a  multitude  of  independent  number  units. 

Insects  are,  indeed,  at  the  climax  of  one  of  the  great  plans  of  animal 
structure  and  development,  and  man  is  somewhere  near  the  culmination 
of  another  and  a  widely  different  plan.  The  competition  of  insects  and 
men  is  thus  largely  a  competition  between  two  diverse  systems  of 
anatomy — that  of  the  articulate,  with  its  complicated  external  skeleton, 
on  the  one  hand,  and  that  of  the  vertebrate,  with  its  internal  skeleton 
on  the  other.  Each  has  its  advantages  which  the  other  can  not  possibly 
duplicate.  It  is  like  a  war  between  two  nations,  one  of  which  should  so 
greatly  excel  in  the  construction  of  its  firearms  and  the  other  in  the 
quality  of  its  ammunition  that  neither  could  ever  gain  a  decisive  and 
final  victory. 

Fortunately  for  us,  however,  our  contest  with  insects  is  not  between 
two  kinds  of  structure  merely — if  it  were  we  might  not  hope  to  win — 
but  it  is  also  between  two  types  of  mind.  The  insect  mind  is  fixed  and 
unchangeable;  wonderfully  adapted  by  nature  to  the  normal  demands 
upon  it,  but  essentially  the  same  for  all  of  each  species,  virtually  in¬ 
capable  of  education  and  beyond  the  reach  of  improvement.  The  corn¬ 
field  ant  knows  at  its  birth  far  better  than  a  man  what  to  do  in  a  corn 
field  in  its  own  behalf ;  but  the  man  can  observe,  and  learn,  and  remem¬ 
ber,  and  record,  and  imagine,  and  invent ;  can  improve  his  methods,  and 
cultivate  his  abilities,  and  can  accumulate  and  transmit  his  learning  and 
his  records  in  an  ever-increasing  mass.  The  practical,  exact,  and  effi- 


6 


cient,  but  wholly  unimaginative  and  uninventive  mind  of  the  ant  is  at 
first  a  better  instrument  of  adaptation  and  control  than  the  vacant,  un¬ 
formed,  but  versatile  and  improvable  mind  of  primitive  man.  It  is 
only  by  slow  degrees,  with  the  accumulation  of  knowledge  and  the  or¬ 
ganization  of  methods  in  successive  generations,  that  men  and  insects 
can  come  to  have  something  like  an  equal  chance  in  the  struggle  for 
supremacy;  and  it  is  only  by  further  advances  in  these  methods  and 
along  these  lines — by  investigation  and  education,  in  short — that  we  can 
hope  finally  to  free  ourselves  from  a  humiliating  subordination  to  what 
we  not  unreasonably  call  our  “insect  enemies.”  Is  the  word  “subordi¬ 
nation”  too  emphatic?  Suppose  that  our  country  had  been  invaded  by 
a  foreign  enemy  who  had  succeeded  in  completely  overrunning  it  to  such 
an  extent  that  we  were  obliged  to  dispute  with  him,  everywhere  and  all 
the  time,  the  bare  possession  and  use  of  our  farms  and  homes,  and  the 
products  of  our  toil;  and  suppose  that  we  were  not  only  totally  unable 
to  dislodge  him  from  our  premises,  but  that  we  were  compelled  to  pay 
him  a  perpetual  annual  tribute,  or  tax  in  kind,  of  seven  and  a  half  dol¬ 
lars  a  head  for  each  man,  woman,  and  child  in  the  land — a  total  of  $700,- 
000,000  per  annum  for  the  whole  United  States — while  we  received  from 
him  in  return,  as  a  contribution  to  our  maintenance,  a  bare  $6,000,000 
worth  a  year  of  clover  seed  (which  costs  him  nothing)  and  $7,000,000 
worth  of  honey  and  wax.  Should  we  have  any  doubt  as  to  which  of  the 
two  competing  populations  was  the  subordinate  one?  While  insects  in¬ 
jure  us  to  an  amount  approximately  fifty  times  that  of  the  benefits  they 
confer,  it  is  at  best  a  doubtful  question  whether,  taking  all  our  activities 
into  account,  and  their  final  effect  on  our  whole  insect  population,  we 
really  do  not  benefit  them  in  the  long  run  more  than  we  injure  them ;  it 
is  at  least  an  open  question  whether  they  are  not  now  more  abundant  in 
our  territory,  on  an  average  and  as  a  class,  than  they  were  when  Colum¬ 
bus  discovered  America. 

Insects  are,  in  short,  a  finished  evolutionary  product,  while  man  i3 
still  in  the  rough.  There  is  no  class  of  animals  on  this  earth  which  gives 
an  intelligent  student  a  more  vivid  impression  of  perfect  fitness  to  its 
maintenance,  of  perfect  adaptation  to  its  needs  and  its  surroundings,  of 
final  and  permanent  finish,  in  short,  than  does  this  insect  class.  A  bee 
or  an  ant  is  a  polished  gem  in  a  perfect  setting ;  or,  better,  we  may  say 
that  the  insect  world  is  a  perfectly  built  and  precisely  adjusted  machine, 


7 


which  has  run  continuously  from  time  immemorial,  without  important 
modification  and  without  repair,  and  which  still  whirls  steadily  on  in 
its  place,  almost  noiseless,  almost  frictionless,  a  marvel  of  precise  and 
perfect  work.  The  human  world,  on  the  other  hand,  is  a  great  inven¬ 
tion  still  in  the  making — not  yet  out  of  the  inventor’s  shop — straining 
itself  here  as  it  turns,  there  grinding  itself  away,  and  every  once  in  a 
while  breaking  down  completely  in  this  or  the  other  part,  with  an  appall¬ 
ing  crush  of  timbers  and  crash  of  steel — as  in  some  great  war,  or  in 
some  disastrous  general  strike. 

Such  are  some  of  the  considerations  which  led  me  to  say  to  my  liter¬ 
ary  colleague  at  the  University — who  laughed  loudly  into  the  telephone 
at  the  suggestion — that  entomology  signifies  more  to  us  than  all  the  rest 
of  zoology,  and  that  it  really  is  a  subject  large  enough  and  important 
enough  for  a  university  department  of  instruction  and  research. 

Let  us  now  turn  to  a  practical  side  of  this  discussion,  and  see  what 
the  great  and  wealthy  state  of  Illinois  is  doing  to  help  its  citizens  in  this 
still  unequal  contest.  I  ought  to  say  in  the  first  place  that,  relatively  to 
other  states  in  the  Union,  Illinois  is  really  doing  very  well.  The  presi¬ 
dent  of  the  Entomological  Society  of  America,  Professor  John  B.  Smith, 
of  New  Jersey,  delivered  last  December  an  address  to  that  society  on  the 
relations  of  insects  and  entomologists  to  the  country  at  large,  in  the 
course  of  which  he  took  occasion  to  say,  in  speaking  of  the  early  official 
entomologists  of  this  state:  ‘‘Illinois  is  another  of  the  states  which  has 
never  allowed  its  service  to  deteriorate,  and  there  is  no  better  work  now 
done  in  the  United  States,  nor  is  there  any  more  effective  organization 
than  that  within  its  limits.”  In  speaking  of  this  state,  consequently,  I 
am  not  selecting  an  unfavorable  example,  but  quite  the  contrary. 

Over  forty  years  ago — in  1867,  to  be  precise — in  response  to  re¬ 
peated  and  urgent  appeals  of  its  citizens,  especially  of  its  horticultur¬ 
ists,  expressed  in  formal  resolutions  of  a  state  society,  Illinois  enlisted 
a  regular  force  for  the  war  against  insects,  and  provided  what  we  may 
call  a  war  fund  for  its  use.  This  army  consisted  of  one  man,  B.  D. 
Walsh,  of  Rock  Island,  an  entomologist  of  extraordinary  ability  and 
repute,  and  he  was  given  as  a  supply  for  his  operations  a  two-thousand- 
dollar  salary  and  nothing  else.  He  performed  as  well  as  he  could  his 
various  duties  of  private,  captain,  colonel,  adjutant,  and  major-general 
of  this  new  force — and  in  two  years  he  was  dead.  He  had  two  successors 


8 


enlisted  for  the  war  on  precisely  the  same  terms,  the  first  of  whom,  Dr. 
Wm.  Le  Baron,  of  Geneva,  Illinois,  maintained  for  five  years  the  unequal 
contest,  when  he  also  died;  and  the  second,  Dr.  Cyrus  Thomas,  of  Car- 
bondale,  abandoned  the  field  in  despair  after  seven  years  of  diligent 
service,  going  then  to  Washington  for  work  in  another  department  of 
science,  where  he  lived  to  the  good  old  age  of  eighty-five.  I  have  some¬ 
times  wondered  if  his  long  survival  was  not  largely  due  to  his  fortunate 
escape  from  an  untenable  situation. 

It  was  in  1882,  twenty-nine  years  ago  next  July,  that  it  fell  to  me 
to  pick  up  the  abandoned  standard  under  conditions  which  made  the  con¬ 
test  seem  a  little  less  hopeless.  Under  the  parsimonious  policy  of  the 
state,  which  it  seemed  useless  to  try  to  improve,  it  may  easily  be  believed 
that  the  entomologists  had  accumulated  no  public  property,  and  not  so 
much  as  a  penny’s  worth  of  anything  came  into  my  hands  as  a  product 
of  their  fifteen  years’  work.  Being,  however,  already  in  the  service  of 
the  state  as  director  of  a  natural  history  survey,  and  blessed  in  that 
capacity  with  an  office  and  one  assistant,  the  beginning  of  a  library,  and 
a  crude  collection  of  insects,  mainly  bought  of  a  village  physician,  it 
seemed  possible,  by  an  operation  which  in  these  commercial  times  might 
be  called  a  merger,  to  make  these  meager  facilities  partly  available  to  the 
Entomologist’s  office,  and  this  was  done.  A  little  later,  in  1884,  the  work 
was  all  established  by  law  at  the  University  of  Illinois,  and  so  associated 
with  the  department  of  instruction  there  that  each  division  of  the  rather 
complex  organization  thus  resulting  derived  some  aid  or  advantage  from 
the  other;  and  under  substantially  these  conditions  we  have  continued 
until  the  present  time. 

The  Entomologist’s  office,  it  should  be  said,  is  not  now  and  never 
has  been  a  department  of  the  University  of  Illinois,  but  is  both  legally 
and  financially  independent  of  the  university  organization.  Neverthe¬ 
less,  during  this  twenty-five  year  period  of  common  management  and 
joint  operation  it  has  become  so  interwoven  in  function  and  equipment 
with  the  related  departments  that  the  whole  is  virtually  one  indivisible 
enterprise  of  investigation,  publication,  and  instruction.  The  Entomolo¬ 
gist’s  office  is,  in  fact,  merely  a  differentiated  part  of  the  natural  history 
survey  of  the  state,  dealing  with  insects,  of  course,  and  directed  mainly 
to  practical  ends;  and  the  corresponding  university  department  of  in- 
istruction  is  largely  a  training  school  of  economic  entomologists,  from 


9 


which  and  from  the  state  office  so  closely  associated  with  it,  a  long  line 
of  young  men  has  gone  out,  and  is  still  going  out  year  after  year,  for 
service  in  many  other  states  and  in  the  entomological  bureau  of  the  na¬ 
tional  Department  of  Agriculture. 

»  Appropriations  of  twenty-three  thousand  dollars  a  year  are  now 

available  to  the  office  for  all  its  work  of  investigation  and  inspection,  and 
for  the  publication  of  its  bulletins  and  biennial  reports — a  sum  sufficient 
to  enable  it  to  maintain  special  assistants  continuously  in  the  field  in 
different  parts  of  the  state,  and  to  keep  its  work  moving,  although  at 
much  too  slow  a  pace,  on  most  of  the  lines  of  research  for  which  it  has 
been  made  responsible. 

Organized  war  against  injurious  insects  is  thus  at  last  provided  for 
in  Illinois,  and  what  we  may  fairly  call  a  corporal’s  guard  of  trained 
and  experienced  fighters  is  now  constantly  in  the  field.  Their  enemies 
can  scarcely  be  said  to  have  diminished  in  number,  however,  during  the 
last  twenty-five  years,  for  the  insect  invasion  of  the  state  is  still  in  prog¬ 
ress.  New  armies  cross  our  borders  at  frequent  intervals,  and  fresh  up¬ 
risings  occur  every  now  and  then,  of  those  already  in  our  midst. 

We  are  doing  our  best  service,  no  doubt,  in  teaching  the  individual 
citizen  how  to  defend  his  own  property  and  person  against  marauding 
enemies,  but  this  is  a  slow,  tedious,  and  very  difficult  process.  One  of 
our  greatest  needs  is  that  of  recruits  for  the  fighting  squad,  and  these 
we  are  seeking  to  get  in  part  by  just  such  instruction  work  as  is  now  in 
progress  here.  To  drop  the  military  figure,  what  we  most  need  is  aid 
in  the  work  of  popular  instruction,  without  which  the  rest  is  virtually 
of  no  avail. 

We  have  published  from  the  Entomologist’s  office  a  total  of  4,700 
pages  on  the  injurious  insects  of  Illinois  in  twenty-five  volumes  of  official 
reports.  It  is  discouraging  to  think  how  little  of  the  practical  content 
of  these  papers  is  actually  in  the  possession  or  at  the  personal  command 
of  the  ultimate  consumer — of  the  individual  citizen — in  whose  interest 
this  work  has  all  been  done  and  these  reports  have  been  prepared.  It  is 
to  you,  teachers  and  prospective  teachers  of  the  public  schools,  that  we 
have  mainly  to  look  for  aid  in  this  dilemma.  In  helping  forward  the 
movement  for  agricultural  education  in  the  public  school  we  should  not 
forget  that  economic  entomology  is  a  part  of  scientific  agriculture,  that 
it  has  its  share,  in  fact,  in  every  division  of  that  great  complex  subject — 


10 


how  important  a  share  I  have  attempted  to  show  you  as  well  as  I  could 
in  general  terms  and  in  so  short  a  time. 

To  the  teacher  of  biology  it  is  especially  important  to  observe  that 
while  general  entomology,  like  general  botany  and  zoology  as  ordinarily 
taught  in  the  schools,  may  be  a  science  of  observation  and  classification 
only,  making  almost  no  demand  on  the  reasoning  powers,  economic  en¬ 
tomology  is  an  experimental  science,  and  involves  as  a  necessary  feature 
the  whole  process  of  the  scientific  method.  It  may  be  made — it  must  be 
made,  if  it  is  to  accomplish  its  main  end — a  means  of  training  in  obser¬ 
vation,  reflection,  and  invention,  in  experiment  and  verification,  and  so 
should  have  an  educational  value  far  greater  than  the  biology  of  the 
ordinary  high-school  course.  We  are  not  weakening  high-school  science 
in  making  it  really  economic;  we  are  making  it  actually  more  scientific 
than  if  its  economic  applications  were  ignored. 

I  intimated,  a  while  ago,  that  although  man  is  distinctively  a  social 
animal,  he  has  something  nevertheless  to  learn  from  insects  with  respect 
to  the  social  spirit  and  to  an  organization  for  community  service.  It 
may  seem  marvelous,  and  indeed  almost  incredible,  that  this  should  be 
so.  The  fact,  however,  is  beyond  dispute;  and  the  explanation  of  it  is 
suggestive  and  important.  We  are  less  perfectly  adapted  than  insects  to 
the  life  we  are  called  upon  to  live,  because  we  have  been  living  it  for  so 
short  a  time;  we  are  less  fitted  for  our  environment  than  insects  are  to 
theirs,  because  we  are  progressive  animals  and  change  our  own  environ¬ 
ment  continuously,  while  they  are  stereotyped  animals  and  stay  in  the 
same  environment  age  after  age ;  with  them  it  is  “  once  adapted,  always 
adapted”;  but  with  us  old  adaptations  are  often  in  the  way — a  hin¬ 
drance  instead  of  a  help — for  they  fit  us  to  an  environment  which  has 
disappeared.  We  have  voluntarily  progressed,  or  have  been  pushed  by 
the  general  improvement  of  progression,  into  situations  to  which  our 
habits,  our  motives,  and  our  traditions  no  longer  correspond ;  we  tend  to 
do  things  which  might  have  been  the  correct  procedure  a  thousand  or 
ten  thousand  years  ago,  but  which  are  now  so  inadequate  and  unfit  that 
we  call  them  ignorant,  or  stupid,  or  wicked  and  wrong.  For  these  mal¬ 
adjustments  there  is  but  one  remedy  with  us;  the  cure  for  the  evils  of 
progress  is  more  progress;  as  we  change  our  environment  we  must  also 
change  ourselves. 

Now  the  environment  of  the  American  farmer  has  changed,  and  is 


11 


still  rapidly  changing.  A  generation  or  two  ago  he  was  relatively  soli¬ 
tary  and  independent;  each  might  do  about  as  he  liked  with  his  own 
and  it  was  no  one  else ’s  business ;  or,  if  this  were  not  always  so,  no  one 
was  aware  of  the  fact.  Now,  however,  it  certainly  is  so  no  longer;  we 
*  suffer,  all  of  us,  in  a  thousand  ways  for  other  people’s  faults.  The  sins 

of  the  father  are  visited,  not  only  at  long  range  upon  his  children  and 
his  children’s  children,  but  at  short  range  also  upon  his  neighbor  and 
his  neighbor’s  family.  As  we  are  drawn,  inevitably  and  irresistibly, 
year  by  year,  into  closer  bonds  of  social  and  industrial  companionship, 
we  are  bound  to  become  socially  and  industrially  more  companionable; 
we  must  consent  to  restrictions,  in  each  other’s  interest,  which  a  gener¬ 
ation  ago  would  have  been  thought  intolerable;  we  must  volunteer  ha¬ 
bitually  mutual  services  which  were  once  uncalled  for ;  we  must  approx¬ 
imate  more  closely  the  methods  of  the  insect  colony;  we  must  learn  to 
emulate  ‘  ‘  the  spirit  of  the  hive ;  ’  ’  we  must  do  intelligently,  willingly,  and 
purposely,  as  an  act  of  mental  and  ethical  adaptation  to  a  novel  situation, 
what  insects  learned  ages  ago  to  do  unconsciously,  structurally,  physio¬ 
logically,  as  a  slow  and  costly  result  of  physical  and  psychical  variation 
fixed  by  natural  selection. 

All  this  is  by  way  of  an  approach  to  the  idea  that  the  modern  farmer 
not  only  owes  it  to  himself,  but  owes  it  especially  to  his  neighbors,  not 
knowingly  to  breed  injurious  insects  or  other  pests  in  his  crops  or  on 
his  premises  to  the  subsequent  injury  of  his  community.  An  ant  or  a 
bee  would  never  do  the  like;  it  would  die  first — would  die,  indeed,  for 
very  much  less  than  that.  It  has  learned  long  ago  its  lesson  of  indi¬ 
vidual  service — of  individual  sacrifice ,  if  necessary  for  the  good  of  its 
community — learned  it  for  the  unanswerable  reason  that  only  thus  can 
the  individual  welfare,  involved  as  it  is  in  the  welfare  of  the  community, 
be  best  promoted.  We  are  only  beginning  to  learn  this  lesson,  but  the 
sooner  we  get  it  learned  the  less  will  be  the  common  loss,  and  the  better 
will  be  our  position  to  withstand  the  assaults  of  our  better  trained  and 
better  disciplined  insect  enemies.  If  the  farmers  of  a  community  were 
as  united,  as  unanimous,  as  public  spirited,  and  as  completely  masters 
of  the  art  and  method  of  their  calling,  as  are  the  ant  communities  which 
infest  their  corn  fields,  no  one  of  them  would  ever  lose  his  crop  because 
of  the  corn  root-aphis  and  the  corn-field  ant,  because  no  one  would 
allow  these  insects  to  multiply  and  mature  to  the  destruction  of  his  own 


12 


corn,  and  then  to  escape  to  the  injury  of  that  of  his  neighbors;  all 
would  avail  themselves  promptly  and  conscientiously  of  the  facts  and 
methods  now  known  to  us,  sufficient  for  an  arrest  of  injury  and  a  de¬ 
struction  of  the  injurious  agents;  each  would  do  this  as  a  matter  of 
principle — that  is  to  say,  as  a  matter  of  course — even  if  it  seemed  to 
diminish  for  a  time  the  profit  on  his  own  operations  and  investments, 
because,  secure  in  a  like  action  by  others,  he  would  know  that  each 
would  profit  more  by  the  public  spirit  of  all  than  any  one  could  profit 
by  his  own  separate  selfishness  if  all  were  to  be  equally  selfish  and 
short-sighted.  This  view  of  the  farmer’s  duty  to  his  community  may 
seem  somewhat  utopian — as  implying  higher  qualities  in  human  nature 
than  we  have  a  right  to  expect  at  the  present  time;  but  why,  indeed, 
should  the  farmer  allow  the  chinch-bugs  he  has  raised  in  his  wheat  to 
escape  into  his  neighbor’s  corn  any  more  than  he  should  allow  his  cattle 
to  break  out  of  their  pastures  to  feed  on  that  neighbor’s  crops?  Why 
should  he  breed  mosquitoes  in  the  waste  overflow  of  the  farm  creek  to 
infect  his  neighbor’s  family  with  the  germs  of  malarial  disease,  when 
he  may  not  let  his  child  run  free  if  suffering  from  diphtheria?  What¬ 
ever  the  individual  may  say  in  reply  to  these  pointed  questions,  the 
state  is  beginning  to  answer  that  there  is  no  reason;  and  laws  are  being 
passed  year  after  year  to  prevent  just  this  kind  of  stupid  and  injurious 
selfishness. 

We  have  had  a  law  of  just  that  description  in  this  state  for  several 
years,  and  we  owe  its  enactment  to  the  San  Jose  scale — a  Chinese  insect 
which  came  secretly  to  this  country  by  way  of  Japan  in  1872.  This 
was  a  case  of  Japanese  invasion  far  more  successful,  and  probably  more 
destructive  also,  than  any  which  Japan  could  possibly  make  by  means 
of  dreadnoughts  and  armies  of  little  brown  men.  Establishing  itself 
thoroughly  on  the  Pacific  Coast  at  San  Jose,  it  next  made  a  long  leap 
quite  across  the  continent  to  New  Jersey,  and  from  that  state  as  a  center 
it  has  dispatched  its  armies  of  invaders  into  every  state  in  the  Union, 
in  some  states  into  every  county,  and  in  some  counties  onto  every  farm. 
Armies  of  orchardists  are  now  fighting  it  yearly  everywhere,  and  train 
loads  of  ammunition  in  the  form  of  sulphur  and  lime,  thousands  of 
small  arms  in  the  form  of  spraying  pumps,  and  hundreds  of  pieces  of 
artillery — the  great  power  sprayers — are  in  the  hands  of  these  armies; 
and  in  order  that  no  indifferent  noncombatant  may  give  aid  and  com- 


13 


fort  to  the  enemy  which  the  rest  are  engaged  in  fighting,  it  is  made  by 
law  a  misdemeanor,  punishable  by  a  fine,  to  give  it  food  and  lodgment 
on  one’s  premises.  This  same  law,  enforced  by  watchful  inspectors,  has 
been  our  sole,  but  sufficient,  means  of  defense  in  this  state  against  another 
destructive  insect  invader,  the  brown-tail  moth,  which  would  have 
been  established  by  this  time  in  scores  of  Illinois  nurseries  and  hundreds 
of  Illinois  orchards  if  it  had  not  been  stopped  and  destroyed  on  its  way 
from  France  before  it  had  reached  its  destination.  My  own  squad  of 
inspectors  captured  and  burned  alive  several  hundred  thousand  of  these 
French  invaders  in  the  winter  and  spring  of  1908-09,  and  several  thou¬ 
sands  more  in  1909-10.  It  is  the  object  of  such  laws,  not  to  compel  the 
people  to  do  their  duty,  but  to  aid  them  in  defending  their  property 
by  making  their  defense  effective.  These  laws  are  also  a  great  educa¬ 
tional  agency,  for  those  charged  with  their  administration  and  enforce¬ 
ment  must,  of  course,  show  the  people  concerned  just  what  to  do  and 
just  how  to  do  it  to  meet  the  obligations  which  the  law  imposes. 

Of  course  there  is  not  the  slightest  difference,  in  principle,  between 
the  special  case  of  the  San  Jose  scale  and  many  other  cases  of  dangerous 
insect  injury  to  which  the  law  has  never  yet  been  applied.  If  all  the 
infested  wheat  stubble  in  the  country  were  to  be  burned  over  or  plowed 
under  for  a  single  summer,  the  additional  precaution  being  taken  to 
burn  the  chaff  and  screenings  from  infested  fields  at  threshing-time, 
all  the  Hessian  fly  in  the  country  would  be  at  once  destroyed,  and  sub¬ 
sequent  injury  by  that  insect  would  become  impossible.  It  now  causes 
the  loss  of  many  millions  of  dollars  every  year,  and  no  one  can  fully 
protect  himself  against  it  because  of  the  Hessian  flies  bred  by  his  neigh¬ 
bors  in  their  neglected  fields.  There  is  no  more  reason  why  these  condi¬ 
tions  should  be  permitted  to  continue  than  there  is  reason  to  permit  the 
San  J ose  scale  to  range  abroad  at  will ;  and  when  our  people  acknowl¬ 
edge  this  fact  and  are  willing  to  support  laws  and  regulations  based  upon 
it,  we  shall  find  legislatures  and  state  officers  ready  enough  to  act  accord¬ 
ing  to  their  wishes.  At  present  the  farmer  may  appeal  to  the  state  law 
and  the  entomological  inspector  for  the  protection  of  his  orchard  or 
his  raspberry  patch  against  insects  abroad  in  his  neighborhood,  but  he 
must  take  care  of  his  corn  and  oats  and  pastures  for  himself.  In  that 
undertaking  the  state  gives  him  only  information  and  advice,  and  no 
efficient  aid. 


r 


14 


Evidently  we  have,  in  this  teeming  world  of  insect  life,  one  of  the 
greatest  forces  of  nature,  largely  hostile  to  our  interests,  and  but  slightly 
available  for  any  of  our  purposes.  Its  conquest  and  control  are  one  of 
the  original  remaining  problems  of  our  civilization  to  which  we  must 
give  the  same  grade  of  skilled  and  thoughtful  attention  that  we  are 
giving  to  the  mastery  of  contagious  disease,  itself  largely  an  insect 
problem,  or  to  the  planning  and  making  of  a  Panama  canal. 

The  people  of  Illinois  lately  voted  twenty  millions  of  dollars  for 
the  construction  of  a  ship  canal,  the  value  and  need  of  which  seem  to  be 
still  matters  of  grave  dispute — a  sum  which,  at  our  present  rate  of 
expenditure,  would  run  our  state  department  of  entomological  investi¬ 
gation  for  eight  hundred  and  seventy  years.  Our  progress  is  too  slow, 
and  it  is  time  to  speed  up. 

And  the  new  educational  movement  must  help  us  on  to  give  prac¬ 
tical  effect  to  what  we  already  know,  for  it  is  our  ignorance  that  hinders 
us.  It  is  a  reproach  both  to  our  education  and  to  our  industrial  enter¬ 
prise  that  we  should  have  to  make,  in  this  beginning  of  the  twentieth 
century,  any  such  confession  of  incompetency  as  is  contained  in  this 
paper.  It  is  a  hopeful  sign  of  the  day  that  the  economic  entomologist 
has,  now  and  then,  the  opportunity  to  tell  some  part  of  his  story  of  the 
ways  of  insects  and  their  relation  to  human  life  and  welfare  to  audiences 
like  this,  made  up  so  largely  of  active  and  prospective  teachers.  It  is  a 
privilege  I  appreciate,  and  for  which  I  heartily  thank  the  managers  of 
this  institute. 


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